


turn down the lovesongs

by thankyouandyou



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouandyou/pseuds/thankyouandyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim’s skin tastes like salt and rust. This is the closest Raylan's ever come to putting a gun in his mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turn down the lovesongs

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a larger Zombie Apocalypse AU, which will hopefully be finished sometime soon.

“-way past six thirty.”

****

Way past six thirty. Tim still half asleep in a strip of sunlight. Things change, people change, all his rules are fucked, yeah, yeah, Raylan knows, but that means he’s got to drink his coffee alone in the mornings, and hell, he doesn’t wanna.

****

Tim doesn’t open his eyes at sound of his name, and he doesn’t jerk awake with the hand on his shoulder like he used to. Instead he groans and frowns, pushes himself up and reaches over, blind. Finds cloth, then skin, then hair. There’s a brand of sunlight on his upper arm, and it moves down, down to his wrist like a cuff as he leans back, pulling. He passes the sun on to Raylan, and it’s in his face for a second, white light, then moving over his hairline, down his back.

****

Raylan leaves the coffee mug on the bedside table and gives in to the hand on his neck, to gravity. He puts his knees carefully on either side of the shape of Tim’s left leg under the sheets. He settles on top of him on all fours, a human cage.

****

Tim sits up a little against the headboard, eyes open now and squinting at the light in his face. There’s a deep line between his brows, like he’s offended, or confused, or aiming at something a mile ago. Raylan sits back on his heels, brings his hands up off the mattress. He shades Tim’s eyes, and watches his pupils dilate.

****

Raylan traces an eyebrow with his thumb.

 

“Mornin’.” Tim nods and doesn’t say it back.

****

“The point of this exercise was to get you outta bed, not me back in it,” Raylan says, but Tim’s not paying attention, his rules are fucked, no _yessir_ left in him- though he never really had a yessir to spare for Raylan. His fingers drag from Raylan’s nape to his mouth, tracing his lips as they move. Raylan’s lips are cracked and dry and nearing forty. His teeth are better, but he cannot bring himself to bite this early in the day. His tongue is kind.

****

Tim’s skin tastes like salt and rust. Raylan wants to joke about how this is the closest he’s ever come to putting a gun in his mouth, but it is an old joke and they both sleep with guns under their pillows. He doesn’t want to bring more bullets into this bed.

****

He grazes the pad of the finger with his front teeth, Tim sighs and squirms a little, one leg coming up, knee rubbing against Raylan’s hip, and there are places they could take this. Places safer than this way-past-six-thirty with Tim’s trigger finger in Raylan’s mouth, and that fond look in his eyes, the one he used to have with people he knew back in the sandbox. Raylan doesn’t waste time wondering when exactly he became one of the people Tim Gutterson looks at and reads history. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps this is a different fondness. Perhaps there are different histories. There are many different kinds of war, they know that now.

****

But it’s way past six thirty, more like a quarter to nine, and they have places to be.

****

Tim takes his finger away, Raylan pretends to chase after to bite it. Tim’s smiling for real now, all crooked teeth and laugh lines, but his eyes are slipping closed again, neck loose on the pillows. “Fallin’ asleep on the job, soldier,” Raylan says, “and we have things to kill.” He moves his hands from shading Tim’s eyes to cradling his face, the way he likes to kiss him.

****

He presses closed mouth to closed mouth, one, two, three times. The third time, there’s even the ghost of a reaction. The corner of Tim’s lip is tilting up. His fingers climb up Raylan’s naked ribs and settle on his sides, and Raylan frowns, thinking again of the _places_ and.

****

“Get up. I’ll blow you in the shower.”

****

Tim sighs and laughs at the same exhale, a sound of disbelief and exhaustion and that different fondness, history. There are many names for the mess they’re in.

****

Raylan pulls away with one last kiss, this one deeper, clinging. He gets up and pads over to the bathroom to turn on the shower. These days it takes a while for the water to run clear.

****

“You’re the strangest time of my life, Raylan Givens,” Tim sighs from the bed. His voice is rough like dirtroad gravel. It’s not news; still Raylan’s heart rate spikes, shot of adrenaline. Weeks ago, Tim was shaking with dirt under his fingernails, moving against him on the dusty kitchen floor at a punishing pace, dazed and slow like wading through water. _All my rules are fucked_ , he’d whispered, licking blood. _You burnt every book_. Raylan isn’t sure he was the one that set that fire, the but he is flattered anyway. Tim used to have so many books.

****

Raylan doesn’t turn around, but he catches his own reflection in the bathroom mirror, grinning sharp and hungry. He can feel Tim’s eyes on him. From the beginning, Tim never stopped staring. One day Raylan’s gonna have to ask him about that.

****

He turns on the tap, hears the pipes groan and doesn’t fight the smile.

****

“Really,” he hums, leaning back against the sink as the water starts running, a dirty yellow trickle that will grow steadier and stronger, and hopefully clearer, in a while. “Is it the sex or the apocalypse?”

****

He can hear Tim’s chuckle back in the room, the sound of bare feet on creaking floorboards, his tired joints popping. He’s up and on the move.

****

Tim comes to lean against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. He’s naked, there’s pinpricks of gooseflesh running up his sides. “It’s the apocalyptic sex,” he drawls. Daring. Or teasing. Raylan still can’t tell the difference sometimes, though he’s getting better at it.

****

Raylan raises his eyebrows. “That’s right,” he says, and Tim raises his right back and huffs, grinning, like he knows how bad they’re fucked. He probably does. He’s a smart man, and the apocalypse is hardly the right place for history like theirs. But it is the best place for arson.

****

They watch each other for a while, and then they watch the water run.

 


End file.
